What network hard drives play well with the Airport Extreme?
February 17, 2009 7:07 AM Subscribe
Can I use one of the ethernet ports on my airport extreme for a network disc or am I limited to USB?
I recently upgraded my home network from a Netgear 802.11 g router to an Airport Extreme. I have been mostly satisfied (especially with the increased speed and range from 802.11 n) but disappointed to find that the ethernet side of things is not implemented as well as on my old router. For example, I tried hooking up my network printer via ethernet on the Airport and never could find it on the network; it has a USB connection as well so I just switched to USB after futzing around with ethernet for a while and it works fine. Now I want to get serious about backing up with Time Machine, and want to know if anyone has had success using an NAS device via ethernet with an Airport Extreme/ Time Machine or should I stick with USB for that as well? Experiences with specific models of hard drive are particularly appreciated; I am looking at drives in the 2 TB size range (I have a lot of pictures) and may get a second drive to use for sharing files over the network. If I would be better off using USB, I will need to use a hub, so any advice there is appreciated as well. I have been using a cheap Belkin hub with my two printers, but it seems to be acting up (although I haven't had time to really troubleshoot; I just ended up hooking the printer I needed at the time directly to the Airport, which solved the problem). As always, thanks in advance for your help.
I recently upgraded my home network from a Netgear 802.11 g router to an Airport Extreme. I have been mostly satisfied (especially with the increased speed and range from 802.11 n) but disappointed to find that the ethernet side of things is not implemented as well as on my old router. For example, I tried hooking up my network printer via ethernet on the Airport and never could find it on the network; it has a USB connection as well so I just switched to USB after futzing around with ethernet for a while and it works fine. Now I want to get serious about backing up with Time Machine, and want to know if anyone has had success using an NAS device via ethernet with an Airport Extreme/ Time Machine or should I stick with USB for that as well? Experiences with specific models of hard drive are particularly appreciated; I am looking at drives in the 2 TB size range (I have a lot of pictures) and may get a second drive to use for sharing files over the network. If I would be better off using USB, I will need to use a hub, so any advice there is appreciated as well. I have been using a cheap Belkin hub with my two printers, but it seems to be acting up (although I haven't had time to really troubleshoot; I just ended up hooking the printer I needed at the time directly to the Airport, which solved the problem). As always, thanks in advance for your help.
I have a Time Capsule, which is little more than an Airport Extreme with an internal drive, and I hang a NDAS disk (specifically, this enclosure) off of it via ethernet as a media drive and it works quite well.
posted by eafarris at 2:47 PM on February 17, 2009
posted by eafarris at 2:47 PM on February 17, 2009
Should work. I have a WD MyBook World Edition NAS drive* that normally lives plugged into an Airport Express (configured as a WDS client) that works fine. I occasionally lug it over to my gf's place & plug it into her Airport Extreme, & it works fine there too (similar setup to yours).
The main thing to keep in mind is its IP - if it gets an address by DHCP it should be fine**, if it has / defaults to a fixed IP you'll need to make sure that's either changed to DHCP or configured to a fixed IP on the same subnet that the Airport is handing out.
(* Yes, I know, it's a POS - but I don't really use it as a NAS, rather as a gateway interface to my Topfield PVR. It plugs into the Toppy via USB, the ethernet is plugged into the Airport, and the NAS runs a couple of utilities to give me network access to the Toppy.)
(** Notwithstanding the usual caveats/problems with bare-bones clients and bare-bones DHCP servers. Using bootpd on OS X as a DHCP server can be problematic with simple devices; dunno about the DHCP server in the Airport series. The MyBook seems to have no problem though...)
posted by Pinback at 2:50 PM on February 17, 2009
The main thing to keep in mind is its IP - if it gets an address by DHCP it should be fine**, if it has / defaults to a fixed IP you'll need to make sure that's either changed to DHCP or configured to a fixed IP on the same subnet that the Airport is handing out.
(* Yes, I know, it's a POS - but I don't really use it as a NAS, rather as a gateway interface to my Topfield PVR. It plugs into the Toppy via USB, the ethernet is plugged into the Airport, and the NAS runs a couple of utilities to give me network access to the Toppy.)
(** Notwithstanding the usual caveats/problems with bare-bones clients and bare-bones DHCP servers. Using bootpd on OS X as a DHCP server can be problematic with simple devices; dunno about the DHCP server in the Airport series. The MyBook seems to have no problem though...)
posted by Pinback at 2:50 PM on February 17, 2009
Response by poster: ...changed to DHCP or configured to a fixed IP on the same subnet that the Airport is handing out.
When I was trying to use my printer over ethernet I could not find the IP address and so could not add it in the print/fax setup in system preferences. All of the support info from Apple talks about printing and sharing hard disks via USB, but only mentions ethernet in passing; "Three Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports for connecting computers or network devices" is the only mention of ethernet I can find on the Apple website. I guess my real question is how do I access the Ethernet functionality on my Airport? I cannot figure out how to get the IP addresses of the two computers connected to it, much less any other "network devices".
posted by TedW at 7:32 PM on February 17, 2009
When I was trying to use my printer over ethernet I could not find the IP address and so could not add it in the print/fax setup in system preferences. All of the support info from Apple talks about printing and sharing hard disks via USB, but only mentions ethernet in passing; "Three Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports for connecting computers or network devices" is the only mention of ethernet I can find on the Apple website. I guess my real question is how do I access the Ethernet functionality on my Airport? I cannot figure out how to get the IP addresses of the two computers connected to it, much less any other "network devices".
posted by TedW at 7:32 PM on February 17, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by TedW at 7:41 AM on February 17, 2009